A paramedic accused of possessing pipe bomb components will plead not guilty to that charge and denies any involvement in causing the deadly explosion at a Texas fertilizer plant that he was among the first to respond to, his lawyer said on Saturday.

Bryce Reed, 31, appeared in federal court in Waco, Texas, on Friday to face one count of unlawfully possessing an unregistered destructive device.

Authorities, who separately announced on Friday a criminal probe into the blast, said no evidence linked Reed's arrest to the April 17 fertilizer plant disaster that killed 14 people and injured about 200 in the town of West - a point Reed's attorney echoed in his first comments about the charge.

Twin car bombs killed 43 people and wounded many more in a Turkish town near the Syrian border on Saturday and the government said it suspected Syrian involvement.

The bombing increased fears that Syria's civil war was dragging in neighboring states despite renewed diplomatic moves towards ending two years of fighting in which more than 70,000 people have been killed.

The bombs ripped into crowded streets near Reyhanli's shopping district in the early afternoon, scattering concrete blocks and smashing cars in the town in Turkey's southern Hatay province, home to thousands of Syrian refugees.

A mystery in Quincy continues to deepen: Who is flying around the city from dusk to dawn, for the past ten days or so?

“It’s frightening, not just weird, but frightening,” said one resident of the Wollaston section.

Every night for nearly the last two weeks, residents have spotted a low-flying aircraft doing loops over the city. WBZ has learned the FAA knows what’s going on, but the agency isn’t telling.

“I mean it is strange. I don’t know if they’re looking for somebody, I have no idea,” one resident told WBZ.

It’s not the state or local police doing the flying, and the FAA is giving out little information, even to city officials.

“It’s frustrating, it really is,” says City Councillor Brian Palmucci. “I specifically asked, ‘Is it a law enforcement flight? Can we tell people that?’ He said, ‘No, we can’t tell you that.’ Then I asked that when folks call me can I at least tell them that it is something that they shouldn’t worry about, it’s something they shouldn’t be concerned with? He said, ‘I can’t tell you that.’”

Japan is incensed by an article in China's state-run People's Daily claiming Okinawa and its connected island chain rightly belong to China.

Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga on Wednesday said Tokyo lodged a strong protest, according to Kyodo News. It is rare for such a senior Japanese official to issue a protest over a Chinese newspaper article.

Suga called the article "injudicious" and insisted Japan's sovereignty over Okinawa is both historically evident and legitimate under international laws.

China has drawn the line, saying the piece was the view of one academic and does not represent Beijing's official position. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the Okinawa and Ryukyu island chains have been a subject of interest for scholars for a long time.

But she stressed that the Diaoyu or Senkaku Islands, administered by Tokyo and claimed by Beijing, are a different matter and do belong to China.

Blood stains are still visible on the sidewalk at the corner of Flower Street and Palm Drive, where a Bakersfield man struggled with as many as nine officers and later died this week.

David Sal Silva, 33 and the father of four young children, died early Wednesday morning after deputies say he fought with them and CHP officers who'd responded to a report of a possibly intoxicated man outside Kern Medical Center.

The Kern County Sheriff's Office says Silva resisted, a canine was deployed, more law enforcement arrived, batons were used and the man later had trouble breathing. He was taken to KMC, where he died. An autopsy was slated for Thursday, but no results have been released.

Some witnesses apparently took cellphone video of the incident but deputies moved quickly to seize the phones. The Sheriff's Office, after releasing a statement Wednesday and naming its officers Thursday, declined all further comment.

People who say they witnessed the incident as well as Silva's family members described a scene in which deputies essentially were beating a helpless man to death. They were indignant that cellphone video had been taken away by deputies.

At least four people have been killed and 18 injured in a series of explosions in a Turkish town close to the border with Syria.

The Hurriyet newspaper quoted the interior minister as saying the explosions in Reyhanli were caused by two car bombs.

"According to the initial information we received, four people were killed and eighteen people were wounded. Of course we're worried that the numbers could rise," Muammer Guler told reporters in comments broadcast on Turkish television.

At least 11 people have been killed in a bomb blast as polls opened across Pakistan in landmark national and provincial elections.

The attack on the office of the Awami National party (ANP) in the port city of Karachi on Saturday morning, which killed 11 people and wounded 35, underlined the risks faced by the country's 86 million voters.

At least two more were wounded in two subsequent blasts and local media reported gunfire in the city. The violence follows a string of bombings and shootings by the Taliban, which have marred the runup to the elections and claimed the lives of more than 130 people.

Video from the night a U.S. Border Patrol agent was accused then acquitted of strangling an immigrant has been released, revealing the officer kicked and reached at the detained man who subsequently fell to the ground, shaking.

Last month, a jury let Luis Fonseca walk out of court a free man, having cleared him on charges he inappropriately choked, kicked, and called a captive immigrant who’d just illegally crossed the U.S. border a ‘f*****g Mexican.’

The video was not released at the time of the April 2013 trial. However, a group of local news organizations and the Associated Press petitioned a judge to have the footage released.

After months of testing hundreds of patients of a Tulsa dentist who is accused of unclean medical practices, results have been revealed that will send a chill through anyone who had sat in the dentists' chair.

The Tulsa Health Department says three patients have tested positive for the HIV virus which causes AIDS, 70 patients have tested positive for hepatitis C and a further four patients have tested positive for hepatitis B.

At one time, it was believed up to 7,000 patients may have been exposed to blood-borne viruses at the clinics of Dr. Scott Harrington in Tulsa and Owasso because he used filthy instruments in their mouths.

A northern California region marked by towering redwood trees and mountains rising out of the Pacific is the focus of an intensive search for a suspect in the shooting deaths of his wife and two young daughters.

Shane Franklin Miller, considered armed and dangerous, grew up in coastal Humboldt County and authorities say that his ability to fortify himself in an area so remote it's called the "lost coast" makes searchers vulnerable.

'It would be easy to hide out up there,' said local resident Phil Franklin, one of hundreds ordered to lock doors and shelter in place as the manhunt expands.

The immigration bill under review by the Senate Judiciary Committee could mandate the creation of a national biometric database to identify residents in the U.S.

The technology referred to simply as a 'photo tool,' in the proposed legislation presented on Thursday, would be used to verify the identity of employees before they were hired to ensure they were in the country legally.

Privacy experts have sounded the alarm that the national database would further usher in the era of 'Big Brother' government by allowing authorities to track residents, described by one analyst as 'a government version of Foursquare.'

Residents in Quincy, Massachusetts are growing increasingly concerned about who or what has been flying about their city from dusk til dawn for the past 10 days.

Almost every night for the past two weeks, residents have spotted - and heard - a low-flying aircraft doing loops over the city.

At least person has captured an image of the plane which has at least helped to confirm that, despite suspicions, it isn’t a drone. The photograph revealed a Cessna single-engine airplane, which is a maned vehicle.

Students at Humboldt State University analyzed 150,000 geocoded tweets sent out between June 2012 and April 2013 containing 10 pre-selected hate words in three categories: Racism, homophobia and disability. One of the findings of the project was that tweets containing the slur 'n*****' were not concentrated in any single region in the US; instead, there are a number of pockets of concentration, including East Iowa and Indiana.

Ohio brothers Blake Aaron Romes, 17, (left) and Blaine Romes, 14, (center) were found dead on Thursday afternoon, hours after police issued an Amber Alert for their disappearance. The alert also included a third teen, Michael Aaron Fey, 17, (right) who has been arrested on theft charges for allegedly stealing a vehicle.

Police have not disclosed a theory for what transpired before the tragic death of the Romes siblings in Ottawa, Ohio and have not released a possible motive for their deaths.

The town of LeRoy, New York, made headlines early last year when it became apparent that a growing number of teenage girls, all from the same local high school, were developing tics and twitches that closely resembled Tourette's syndrome.

Now, a new documentary charts the fear, panic and suspicion of the families involved, as the bizarre affliction took hold of an increasing number of people in the community, and media coverage spiraled out of control.

A trailer for TLC's The Town That Caught Tourette's?, which will air on Wednesday, May 22 at 10pm ET/PT, shows footage of several students twitching as they describe their symptoms.

A gang of Asian men who groomed vulnerable white girls for sex has been jailed for more than 50 years.

Police say up to 100 girls could have fallen victim to the gang led by brothers Ahdel Ali, 25, and Mubarek Ali, 29, of Wellington, Shropshire.

Over a three-year period between 2006 and 2009, the men targeted schoolgirls to control as child prostitutes by giving them alcohol, food and money.

The Ali brothers were found guilty of numerous offences against four girls aged from 13 to 17, including rape, sexual activity with a child, inciting and controlling child prostitution and trafficking children for sex.

A conman who faked a pilot’s licence to get a job flying holidaymakers to the UK is being hunted by police after he failed to appear in court for sentencing for fraud.

Michael Fay, 59, a US national who settled in Alton, Hampshire, worked fraudulently as a commercial airline pilot, flying passengers into Gatwick Airport without the proper licence and medical documentation on eight occasions.

The former US Air Force pilot was sentenced in absentia to three years in prison at Winchester Crown Court on Friday May 3 for fraud.

David Cameron is allowing senior Cabinet ministers to back an EU referendum Bill and vote against the Queen’s Speech.

Eurosceptic MPs will next week force a vote condemning the Queen’s Speech for failing to include legislation on a referendum.

The Prime Minister will be on a visit to the US but he has given colleagues a free vote on the issue.

Eurosceptic ministers including Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, Environment Secretary Owen Paterson, and even Foreign Secretary William Hague, are among at least 100 Conservatives who may support the move, sources said.

Labour leader Ed Miliband will today announce that Labour will not back an in/out referendum on Europe, in a move that will dash the hopes of many of his own MPs who think he should match Mr Cameron’s pledge to hold a referendum after the next election.

Jamie Starbuck, 36, was jailed for life after admitting murdering and disposing of his wife Debbie’s body before fleeing Britain.

Nottingham Crown Court heard that Starbuck dismembered and burnt his 44-year-old wife’s body in the garden of their home in Old Basford, Nottinghamshire. Judge Michael Stokes QC called it a “grotesque and inhumane act” and the most horrific he had encountered in his long career.

The court heard that prior to meeting her husband, Mrs Starbuck, a self-employed proofreader, had inherited £150,000 following the death of her mother.

China's local health organs have been instructed to step up flu monitoring as part of the country's efforts to fight H7N9 flu, according to a government document issued Friday.

The instruction features an upgraded plan for H7N9 flu prevention and control, which was issued by the National Health and Family Planning Commission, to replace a previous version issued in early April.

In counties where any human infections with H7N9 have been confirmed, a two-week-long period of closer monitoring over local flu cases should be in place soon after the bird flu case confirmation, the new document said.

Within the two weeks, any patients with flu or a severe, acute respiratory infection in such counties should give samples and enquiries should be made of them on any possible exposure to H7N9, it said.

Chinese state media say a coal mine blast in southwestern China has left 12 people dead and two more injured.

The official Xinhua News Agency says the gas explosion occurred Friday night in Pingba county in Guizhou province. It says the coal mine was operating illegally and that the operators lied about the number of trapped miners and deaths. An investigation is under way.

A work safety official from the city of Anshun, which administers Pingba, says the mine is licensed and operates privately. The official gave only his last name of Lin, as is customary among low-level Chinese government employees.

Mecklenburg County has confirmed this year’s first case of rabies in a house pet after animal control officials had to euthanize a 6-week-old kitten earlier this week.

Dr. Margurette Straley with Freedom Animal Hospital said her office alerted authorities after a family from the 28205 ZIP code, which includes Plaza Midwood, brought their kitten in for treatment on May 6.

The family said the kitten hadn’t eaten in three days, which Staley said is one of the first noticeable symptoms of the slow-moving and fatal disease. “They can’t swallow,” Straley said, noting the kitten only weighed about two pounds.

The discovery of rabid foxes and coyotes near Young has prompted the Gila County Health Department to issue a warning and ask people to report abnormal wildlife behavior in the Young and Pleasant Valley areas.

A fox and coyote killed in Young in the past month have tested positive for rabies. In addition, a second fox found dead also tested positive. Health officials learned May 1 that a fox and coyote found at Forest Road and Mule Track Road, tested positive for rabies. The Gila County Rabies Control officers are responding to this situation and have increased surveillance in the Young area. No animal or human bites or exposures have been reported to the office.

Gila County Public Health Director Michael O’Driscoll said, “when positives are found, there is an action plan in place to widen the surveillance area until no positives are being found, which gives a better assurance that the virus has been contained.”

County environmental health officials urged campers and hikers to take simple steps to protect themselves Friday after routine monitoring and testing showed that a ground squirrel on Palomar Mountain had plague.

The squirrel, which was trapped at the Cedar Grove Campground, marked the first case of plague found this year.

Department of Environmental Health Director Jack Miller said it’s not unusual to find plague in local mountains during warmer months — and that people could take simple steps to protect themselves from exposure.

“The big thing is to avoid contact with squirrels and the fleas that they can carry,” Miller said. “Campers should set up tents away from squirrel burrows, and hikers and campers should never feed squirrels and warn their children not to play with squirrels.”

The Louisa County Health Department is warning residents after a stray dog tested positive for rabies.

The rabies-positive dog was found late Tuesday night on Dusty Road in Bumpass.

The dog, described as a husky mix, red and white in color with a white stripe down its chest, weighed about 20 pounds and was approximately eight or nine months old.

The Louisa County Health Department is asking anyone who may have come into contact with the animal within the last month to contact its district office immediately at (434) 972-6219. Additionally, if any animals came into contact with the dog, their owners are asked to call.

A California woman who is desperate to quit smoking has slapped a sheriff's deputy so she could be thrown in jail and unable to light up.

Etta Mae Lopez came up with the new way to beat her nicotine habit when she smacked Sacramento County Sheriff's Deputy Matt Campoy in the face as he walked out of the jail, where smoking is not allowed.

Mr Campoy grabbed Lopez and took her inside, where she slapped his arm as soon as he let her go.

They made no attempt to hide their delighted boyish grins as the 25mm cannon round decapitated the target.

Sailors let rip with a .50 Cal heavy machine gun, a general purpose machine gun went off like a chain saw, and bursts from M16 rifles clattered.

It had a deadly serious purpose. This training exercise was a demonstration of firepower from the Israeli navy close to the maritime border with Lebanon - the base for the vehemently anti-Israeli Hizbollah movement - and tens of thousands of the descendants of Palestinian refugees.